


everything stays, everything changes

by tinysmallest



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Steven Universe Future, and he and rose are super duper cute just drown me in them, because writing greg in love is super duper cute, but nothing seriously off the wall, everything here is canon-compliant with what we've seen in the show so far, some generous gluing using headcanons may apply, steven's got issues and that's nothing new, there is also ooey-gooey fluff in here, there will probably be lots of angst and fluff in equal measures here, will update as needed - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinysmallest/pseuds/tinysmallest
Summary: A collection of micro-stories from prompts that were too small to justify uploading by their lonesomes. How 'micro' they are might vary.A look into the characters of Steven Universe and their relationships with each other, spanning from events taking place before the series opens through Steven Universe Future. Currently no spoilers beyond Rosebuds.If this doesn't get a lot of attention I might just dissolve this story and split it up into its pieces to see if that does any better (aka the pieces would be reuploaded here so you won't like, lose them forever if you liked them).
Relationships: Rose Quartz & Steven Universe, Rose Quartz/Greg Universe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	1. I Trusted You [Steven]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Lion's hammerspace, nobody can hear you scream. That's just fine with Steven.

_“They trusted you,”_ he tells the painting. The words ring in the hollow of his head, in the hollow of the night that lurks outside this pink, pink world, ring so loudly despite the fact that they never leave his mouth.

 _“They trusted you,”_ he screams, attempting to push the words from his throat, but the airless world swallows them. The light source above, whatever it is, shines down, uncaring.

He stares at the smiling, serene face, so pretty, so sweet, so pink, and he resists the urge to throw her, to dash her smile to pieces against the tree, because the _real_ pain welling up inside him is selfish, selfish, selfish. Selfish like _she_ was.

And the only thing that burns more than the hatred for his own feelings of betrayal is the shame for the naive, silly little boy who once smiled up at the ghost that haunted his house, his _life_ , and told her “I’ll be good someday, just like you.”

Well… maybe he did turn out just like her.

But it wasn’t good.


	2. Illusion [Greg and Rose]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose decides to do something nice for Greg.

His fingers slipped on the neck of the guitar, a tangle of squeaky, off-notes marring the song. He blinked against heavy eyelids, confused for all of two seconds before realizing the off-key music had come from him.

A soft, low chuckle sounded from above him, and a large, soft hand enveloped his shoulder. “I think you’re done for the night, dear.”

Greg lifted his head to lay it against his wife’s lap with a quiet laugh. She kissed his forehead. “Yeah, probably. I was on a roll though, I swear.”

“Needing sleep is a curse,” she agreed to his unspoken, mild complaint with a grin, “but sadly it’s one you need to live. Come on, bed.”

“All right, all right.” He patted her cheek before sitting up, standing up to stretch and pop his back and put his guitar away. The water nearby lapped gently at the shore as she got out of the van, pulling the mattress in it from the wall to lie flat as he stored his guitar on the passenger seat.

She laid down on her back and he curled up half against her side, half on her chest, closing his eyes with a sigh. “Goodnight, Rose.”

She stroked her fingers through his hair, smoothing it back. “Goodnight, Greg.”

_ba-dum_

His eyes snapped open, freezing.

_ba-dum_

What-

_ba-dum_

“Rose what-” He lifted his head to look at her, able to see even in the starlight the deep blush flooding her cheeks.

“Do… do you like it?” she asked, voice soft, nervous.

“W-well- yes but…?”

“Oh well- I heard some girls talking on the boardwalk? About how, um, humans like to listen to each other’s heartbeat? They find it soothing?” She tapped her forefingers together. “And, well- gems don’t have a pulse naturally but we can shapeshift and I don’t have to create a whole blood system to mimic a heartbeat and I thought- it might make you happy?”

Her dark eyes met his, large and uncertain and hopeful. “D-did it?”

“Oh _Rose,”_ he breathed, heart bursting. He leaned over to press a kiss to her mouth.

His wife was the one with gravity powers, but every once in awhile, he felt like he could just float away into the sky and take her with him.


	3. Defy [Greg]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even if it's only in little ways, pushing back is the only thing that keeps Greg sane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember the stuff I hinted about Greg in the beginning of Not Normal? Yeah time to have a look at that.

_You need a haircut,_ his mother said as he slipped into the house after dark with a sneer to her face and her voice.

He spent an extra hour brushing his hair the next morning, was late to school, and fell asleep in class.

 _Why do you bother with that shit; nobody reads that kind of slop,_ his father snorted, deigning to look up from the football game at the sight of his son scribbling what he knew was a poem out of the corner of his eye.

He scowled and wrung his brain into a burnout to produce another poem after he finished the first.

 _You need to lose weight. No girl likes a chubby boy with no muscle,_ his mother told him after the screaming match with his father died.

He looked her directly in the eye and, while his hand shook a bit more than he would’ve liked, he stuffed another cookie into his face.

 _TURN THAT TRASH OFF,_ his father screamed, nearly ripping the old door off his hinges to get to him.

He shook until the man left the room, then went to his van and blasted his music from there.

 _You’ll never be a musician. People wouldn’t pay to listen to that,_ his mother said one morning, her voice flat, a wine glass in one hand despite it only being a little after ten.

He grit his teeth. Though he avoided her gaze, he very pointedly gave his guitar another strum.

 _Why do you care so damn much!_ his father yelled, hands and eyes raised to the sky as if seeking an answer from a god he’d long since decided must have abandoned him if these people got to be his parents. _You’re not **in** a wheelchair!_

 _Because_ , he snapped back, _people in wheelchairs deserve to get to go places too without people like you yelling at them if they have the strength to get up for one goddamn minute to grab something off a grocery shelf!_

Pain exploded in the back of his head as his father whacked him and he flipped him off, then fled for his room, the door closing just in time.

 _You’re so sensitive,_ his mother said, voice dripping with contempt, as he growled at someone catcalling a girl. _Stop making a scene!_ she yelled at him, grabbing him away and trying to pull him down the street as he yelled at the creep to back off.

 _Don’t you care!?_ he wailed at her, gesturing back to where it happened, knowing even as he asked what the answer would be. _Don’t you care that it upset her!?_

 _She shouldn’t have been wearing those shorts_ , she shot back, and his stomach sank. It must have shown because she rolled her eyes.

His father yelled a gay slur at the television when an ad featuring gay people dared interrupt his stupid team, and he got up and left the room as soon as his father spotted the look on his face. He followed him, banging on his door. _You think you’re so good, his father yelled. You think you’re so much better than the rest of us! You ungrateful little twat!_

He curled up in the corner of his bed and pulled his headphones on and tried to ignore the way his chest felt like it was caving in.

 _You look like a hooligan,_ his mother said, grabbing his ear to inspect the new piercings, and when he tried to push her away she slapped the side of his head. He flinched.

He added another piercing to the ear she grabbed the next day.

 _No wonder you’re pegging your life on that rocker garbage. You’re a goddamn idiot,_ his father grunted as he snatched the test out of his son’s hand, the glaring red F in the corner mocking the fact that he even bothered to try to study this time.

He snatched the paper back, tore it up, watched the bits rain down like snow, like falling stars, into his bedroom’s wastebasket, and then sat down and finished a whole album cover design in under an hour, the paint and pastels a welcome filth against his fingers as he carefully hung it up to dry.

 _My parents are assholes_ , he mumbled to Andy at the last family reunion he would ever attend.

Andy looked over to their mothers, giggling together like schoolgirls, and frowned, confused and maybe a bit suspicious. _They seem all right to me? What're you talking about?_ his cousin said, and he hunched his shoulders and didn’t reply.

 _You’re abandoning your family!_ his mother shrieked as he loaded the last of his stuff into his van. He sorely regretted not being a little faster. He might’ve been halfway across the state by now if he had been. _How could you do this to us!?_

 _Good riddance!_ his father howled. _I didn’t raise any son of mine to be an ungrateful piece of shit!_

Gregory DeMayo looked at them as he closed the door, a long, slow look, and hopefully the last one he'd ever take.

 _You didn’t raise me at all,_ he said quietly, voice trembling with all the grief and fury of a coming cosmic storm, and he turned the key and slammed the gas before they could see the tears welling over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen all I'm saying is that Greg Universe loses his beloved wife and ends up a new father with a magical baby and zero money at the same time. He's so poor that he's dressing Steven in his old merch at only two years old despite it being ABSURDLY huge on the baby (Steven's Birthday; pay attention to the photo album). He's dealing with the death of his wife and the challenges of being a new father and his in-laws hate him because they blame him for taking Rose away and he seems to kind of agree with them in that he never fights them even when they mistreat him with the exception of twice (calling them out in The Message; chasing after them and yelling at them after kidnapping Steven in Three Gems And A Baby). Hell, they're not even in Steven's birthday photos. And he says in Steven's Birthday he did the baby part alone.
> 
> Then Andy shows up in Gem Harvest and he looks absolutely DEVASTATED to see him. Not scared or angry, and he let him touch Steven, so Andy can't have been someone who ever laid a hand on him or said anything too cruel, but damn, he's so upset to see him at first. And when Steven gasps that Universe isn't a real last name he gets a little defensive about it and then openly says he got it changed.
> 
> Andy's a grown man so he's definitely culpable for the things that come out of his own mouth, but the bit about Greg thinking he was so much better than the rest of them, that he just got in his van and drove away? That he turned his back on his family? That sounds parroted. And the rest of the bigoted things he espouses? All that shit doesn't exist in a vacuum.
> 
> We got a man with no money with a magic baby as a new father no doubt drowning in grief from the death of his wife and he doesn't go to his parents? Not even for COMFORT? In all the stories he tells Steven there's not ONE about his own childhood? No mention of how his parents reacted to his wife? He changed his SURNAME of all things, something that plenty of artists DON'T DO because they don't need to in order for their stage name to become part of their brand? And then his cousin turns up spouting that Greg thought he was way too good for the family and he abandoned them and tons of bigoted garbage? Yeah, something's up. Greg did not come from a good place.
> 
> EDIT: Noncanon as of the episode Mr. Universe. Turns out I was right on the money about his family being abusive! I was just off on the specific kind of abusive. This is close, but the tone is a little wrong in ways I can't put to words. I may revisit this concept of Greg's childhood with a more canon approach in the future, but I'm gonna leave this here because I like it.


End file.
